Man dies from stroke after wife unable to remember FAST acronym

Mike Collins, a 46 year old man from Bristol died earlier today after his wife was unable to remember the acronym used in a recent stroke awareness TV campaign to inform the public of the condition's symptoms.

‘It had me stumped for ages’ said his 43 year-old wife Jane ‘When he collapsed I thought it might've been a stroke and then remembered Sue Johnstone had been in a TV-ad campaign to let people know what the symptoms might be. At first I thought of calling an ambulance straightaway, but then thought I'd look a bit stupid if I raised a false alarm. After all they must have spent millions on those adverts.’

‘I was pretty sure the campaign was for a four letter word, and thought it started with F, so I had to think does it mean FACE, or FAST, or FREEZE maybe it was six letters? It was so confusing that I called my father, who unfortunately is a little deaf and didn’t know what I was talking about and thought it might be CAT, which he said was short for Cable’s A Tosser as he doesn’t like the Liberals.'

'I then rang my brother who lives in Australia, but he’d never heard of the campaign, but at least it was nice to catch-up with him for 20 minutes as we haven’t spoken since Christmas. He's turning into a typical Aussie and jokingly suggested it might be SHAG which stands for Sheila's Husbands A Gonner.'

‘Next stop was Kevin who lives over the road. He’s a genius at the pub quiz and wins almost every week, but even he was confused by what it meant despite having seen the advert hundreds of times. He said the answer was on the tip of his tongue and that I should pop round later. In the meantime he suggested that I call 999 but even then the young lady who answered said she'd seen the advert on many occasions but couldn't remember the precise meaning. Eventually she said it probably meant FACT, short for Finish A Cup of Tea, which of course I did, after all I wouldn’t want to upset the emergency services by ignoring their advice.’

‘In the end I decided to look on the internet, and sure enough the answer FAST popped-up in less than a second, but by then of course it was much too late, which is a bit ironic really. I felt such a fool, but the undertaker told me not to worry as I wasn't alone and most of his other customers had also been confused by the advert. If I ever meet Sue Johnstone I'll tell her she should have gone for something simpler such as FAFA, you know it means, Fone A F*****g Ambulance, or should that start with a P?'

We've tried telling them:
a) that it's in poor taste and
b) they might actually have a stroke one day and they'll be sorry.
But then they start lolling their tongues again and rolling their eyes and we just crease up.